The Devil's Bath

Set in eighteenth-century Austria, The Devil's Bath follows Agnes, a young woman who marries her beloved and settles into life in his remote rural community. The world she enters is cold and unfamiliar to her, and she grows increasingly isolated from her husband, his deeply religious household and the daily labour of village life. Her faith and her sensitive nature offer no comfort as her inner loneliness deepens, and she begins to drift toward dark thoughts. The film concerns a marriage that leaves no place for the bride within it, and the violence she eventually commits as her only perceived escape from that isolation.

The film is directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, who also wrote the screenplay. It is their third feature, following Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge, and it returns them to Austrian material after their earlier work. Anja Plaschg plays Agnes, with Maria Hofstätter, David Scheid, Natalija Baranova, Claudia Martini and Lukas Walcher in supporting roles. It is a German-Austrian co-production running 121 minutes, mixing drama and history with horror and mystery.

On IMDb the film holds 6.6 out of 10 from roughly 7,900 votes, and on TMDB it also sits at 6.6 from a much smaller number of votes. A critics' rating of 7.4 from 76 reviews places critical response noticeably above the general audience scores on both platforms.